Video surveillance systems are integral to many security systems. For example, many video surveillance systems include surveillance cameras, video recorders, controllers, and viewers. In operation, a video surveillance system can generate an alarm when certain events occur, for example, when a camera detects motion, when a door sensor is triggered, or when hard disk storage space is low. When these and other types of alarms are generated, the alarm can be reported to an operator monitoring the system, and the operator can take necessary action based on the nature of the alarm.
When an increasing number of video surveillance systems are employed to monitor a premise, security operators must monitor a huge number of alarms from the various systems. Monitoring the alarms can include analyzing video from cameras associated with the alarms and taking a corresponding action.
Thus, in some cases, each alarm may require attention from a different user. For example, a user could be an operator monitoring a specific set of surveillance cameras or an administrator monitoring the entire premise. Each alarm may also require a different set of actions to be taken by the corresponding user. For example, some of the alarms might be critical and need to be communicated to a user without delay.
In known security systems, there are various ways to notify a user about an alarm. For example, specialized software or live dashboard services could be used to notify the user. The user could also be notified by email or text/short message services (SMS). However, each of these notification methods has disadvantages.
For example, when specialized software is used, the software must be installed in the system. Furthermore, the specialized software does not report the alarm to a user when the user is at a remote location. While email or SMS can notify a user at a remote location, the notification does not provide detailed information about the alarm, and the user does not have enough information to determine the appropriate course of action.
There is, thus, a continuing, ongoing need for systems and methods to report alarms from a video surveillance system to users in a remote location and to provide the users with sufficient information for the users to determine an appropriate course of action. Preferably, such systems and methods automatically post alarm information to a news feed.